


Slender Beginnings

by WitchOfTheWestCountry



Category: Slender Man Mythos
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 20:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12328188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchOfTheWestCountry/pseuds/WitchOfTheWestCountry
Summary: Since the dawn of life a being has existed who communed with the forests, but when the humans come along, he has to try and understand them.





	Slender Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> A very short history.  
> An idea occurred to me as I wrote the ending of my Slender Man smutfic, about why he does what he does. And the idea wouldn't leave me, so I wrote it down :)  
> I also hope its an explanation for a question asked me at the end of my other fic.

 

He’d been in existence since the first life had spawned - the first joining of insignificant atoms to make mindless blobs that later developed into creatures - but of all the life this planet had to offer, he loved the green things the most. The Trees, the Plants, the Grass. They had minds themselves, though many would not appreciate or understand Them. The creatures that roamed, feasting on the greenery and each other, weren’t interesting to him. They died too soon, making no impact on the world, except to fertilise the forests and jungles with their remains.

But he lived happily enough communing with the Plants, ignoring the beasts and the birds. He didn’t age.

The world spun on its axis, time moved on. The beasts came and went, changing their form, adapting to their surroundings, and one day the humans came. Strange, monkey-like creatures, noisy and volatile but no threat to him.

He remembered the first time he’d noted them - they'd been around for millenia before he finally took an interest. He saw one approaching a Tree, holding a sharpened stone in its hand, and it had stared at a Tree for a long time, unknown thought processes sparking together in its mind. And then it had cut.

 

He’d started to study them then, angry at first then intrigued.

They cut down his Trees, used Their bodies for fire and building, but they fascinated him. They formed bonds, grouping together like forests of their own as if imitating nature. They cared for their saplings, helped them grow.

Over thousands of years they clung to existence despite being ill-suited for their environment, tenacious and stubborn, surviving hardships against all odds. He thought they would die out, as the other creatures had eventually, but sooner. Yet they did not. They thrived instead, expanded, spread out across the globe.

 

They were frail things, the humans, their lives snuffed out all too soon.

And they were ignorant: They thought themselves important, putting themselves above all other species - even his beloved flora - and because of this they were destructive.

They laid barren huge swathes of land to build their houses, using the Trees for fuel, drilling into the earth to rob its precious resources, not seeming to care that one day it would all be gone and their demised would surely follow.

Yet he liked them anyway. He couldn’t tell why.

Maybe it was because they were so ephemeral: There were Trees on the earth older than entire generations, yet if even one person survived a century they marvelled at it, is if it were some monumental achievement.

It took him thousands of years, but he thought he began to understand them.

The were blind to the wonders around them. That’s why they didn’t treasure them as they should.

He couldn’t be sad about the deaths of his trees, as the Trees lived on, although the humans couldn’t see Them.

He saw Them: Magnificent ghosts that never stopped growing, Their branches reaching to the skies, enduring. They had eternal life, as he did, and compassion for the humanity that destroyed Them. Yet humans walked through these Spirits as if they weren't there.

It made him sad: Their lives wasted on unimportant matters, rushing here and there, tending to objects instead of their world.

The children grieved him the most: They started out perfect. Innocent and unspoiled. But life changed them, grew them, made them unhappy, made them fight each other.

And when they died, they disappeared. Gone, with no trace. He looked for them often, hoping they had Spirits like the trees, but it seemed they did not.

And that was why he decided to help them.

He would help the children. He would take them away from this imperfect world, take them to the place where he dwelled, where they would never become ill, never grow old, never die. Never be ruined.

He couldn’t save all of them, but he would try to help as many as he could.

He started to appear to them, singing his song that the older ones couldn’t hear, drawing them to him, taking them away. After they were gone, the older ones lamented, cried for their absent children, and sometimes he became frustrated that they didn’t understand the service he was doing for them. But he couldn’t blame them, not really. How could he expect their simple minds to grasp it?

 

He became a legend.

They portrayed him in their art: on stone and wood and paper and later electronically, although their sensitive electrical impulses couldn’t cope with the ancient powers he possessed.

They gave him many names, depending on where and when in the world they saw him:

Fear Dubh. Takkenmann. Der Groẞman.

Slender Man.

They feared him.

But he was only trying to help. He could only hoped one day they would appreciate it.

 

He worked alone for centuries, until one day he found an older one, a female who appeared to grasp what he was doing; a consort who would help him.

A lover.

He would save her from this existence as he had no other. He would take her with him.


End file.
